‘Red Ken’ redux

Let’s face facts: Livingstone has a problem with Jews.

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On 1 March last a remarkable meeting took place between the British Labor
politician Kenneth Robert Livingstone (“Red Ken” to his friends) and what has
been described as “a substantial number” of British Jews who are Labor Party
members. The meeting was private and its proceedings were conducted under
Chatham House rules – meaning that nothing that was said could be attributed,
though Livingstone himself let it be known that he was happy for his remarks to
be both reported and attributed. We know about the meeting because it was the
subject of a scarcely less remarkable letter written on March 21 by some of
those present to Labor leader Ed Miliband, and subsequently leaked to the Jewish
Chronicle.

On May 3 Londoners will go to the polls to elect a new mayor.
For all practical purposes the choice is between the incumbent Boris Johnson,
the Conservative candidate, and the man from whom he snatched the mayoralty four
years ago, Ken Livingstone. Red Ken is nominally running on a Labor ticket. But
it’s worth bearing in mind that at the first London mayoral election, in 2000,
Livingstone ran – successfully – as an independent against the official Labor
candidate.

Tony Blair (the then Labor prime minister) wasted little time
in having Livingstone expelled from the party, but of course he could not be
dislodged from the office to which he had been elected at City Hall. The
expulsion was subsequently rescinded and in 2004 Livingstone ran for mayor as
the official Labor candidate, and won. But in 2008 he lost – narrowly – to Boris
Johnson. Now, in the year of the summer 2012 London Olympics (in the ceremonial
of which the mayor of London will play a prominent part), Livingstone is
desperate to win back the mayoral trophy.

Livingstone’s 2008 defeat was
by no means a foregone conclusion. Then aged 62, he had spent a lifetime
immersed in the socialist politics of the metropolis, carefully building
“rainbow” coalitions of the capital’s ethnic malcontents, prominent amongst whom
were the Irish and the Muslims. To please the Irish he lavished praise on
the Sinn Fein/IRA leadership, whom he went out of his way to meet, explaining
that Britain’s treatment of the Irish had been worse than Hitler’s treatment of
the Jews – a statement as obscene as it was untrue. To please the Muslims he
invited to City Hall Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric best known for his
support for suicide bombers, the execution of homosexuals, wife-beating and the
destruction of the Jewish state.

But Livingstone has never courted the
Jewish vote. As Labor leader of the now-defunct Greater London Council (1981-86)
he pursued an unashamed anti-Israeli agenda. His Jewish apologists explained
this as anti-Zionism but not anti- Semitism. But this alibi has become
progressively harder to uphold. In 1984, in an interview with Davar, Livingstone
accused Jews of “organizing here in London and throughout Britain into
paramilitary groups which resemble fascist organizations.” As far as I’m aware
he has never apologized for this outrageously false statement. More recently we
must call to mind that in an infamous incident in 2005 he publicly insulted the
newspaper reporter Oliver Finegold – who is Jewish – by likening him to “a
concentration camp guard.”

Let’s face facts: Livingstone has a problem
with Jews. Taken individually, each of his anti-Jewish indiscretions could
perhaps be explained away as a slip of the tongue, a momentary lapse. Taken
together they constitute a dossier. And in 2008 the Jews of London had their
revenge. Even as the day of the poll approached, Livingstone could have taken a
deep breath and issued an effusive apology for the hurt he had caused the Jewish
citizens of London. He did not do so. He relied instead on the alliance of
malcontents that had served him well in the past. His vote actually increased
compared with 2004. But Boris Johnson’s vote increased by an even greater
percentage (the details are in an analysis I published in the Jewish Journal of
Sociology in 2010). There is little doubt that much if not most of this increase
came from Jewish voters who would otherwise have simply abstained.

Such
is the grim background to the meeting of March 1, 2012, and to the letter
subsequently sent to Ed Miliband – the first professing Jew to lead the Labor
Party. What were the motives of those who attended the meeting? They claimed
that they wished “to explore ways in which Ken could re-connect with Jewish
voters in advance of the May 3rd mayoral election.” Did they hope that he would
oblige them with an attractive sound-bite? Or that he would give an assurance
that during the mayoral campaign he would refrain from saying anything about
Jews or Israel?

If so they were bitterly disappointed. Livingstone (they
reported to Miliband) sees Jews exclusively as a religious group, lacking any
ethnic or national dimension. “At various points in the discussion,” they
continued, Livingstone “used the words Zionist, Jewish and Israeli,
interchangeably, as if they meant the same.” What is more, he “did so in a
pejorative manner.” Incredibly, however, they still managed to end their letter
on a note of optimism: “We firmly believe that Ken can turn this situation
around, and can count on Jewish voters to help him be elected Mayor of London.
But he does however desperately need to face up to the issues we
raise.”

In my view this forced optimism is totally without
foundation. Livingstone has pitched his tent. Everyone on the right side
of half-witted knows that it contains nothing that could possibly be attractive
to any self-respecting Jew. Reading the letter (not to mention Livingstone’s
completely unapologetic reaction to it) I am left wondering whether any other
ethnic group in the great multi-ethnic city of London would have dared demean
itself as did those Jews who secretly met Livingstone on March 1. I have to ask
what it would really take to make them – those Jews – do the only honorable
thing that is left to them to do (and as one of those who met him – the
celebrated Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland – has now to his credit done)
and break with him. And having broken with him those Jews must surely reassess
their membership of the party that supports him, affords him its membership and
extends to him its sycophantic protection.

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